Tenants are more often overdrawn and pay bills late more often than people who own an owner-occupied home. RaboResearch writes this in a research.
In addition, people more often postpone living together or starting a family because of the lack of a suitable home, says ING in a statement. research, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for divorcing couples to find a new home, say Scheidingsexpert Nederland and Van Bruggen Adviesgroep.
They are posts that are published in the run-up to the housing protest this coming Sunday.
Money worries
Homeowners are one and a half times more likely to say that they regularly had money left over in the past year than tenants, according to a survey by RaboResearch among 1,447 Dutch people who live independently. Tenants are also twice as likely to say they had to use their savings for fixed expenses or daily expenses.
“Related to homeowners, tenants are more often concerned about money,” says Nic Vrieselaar, economist at RaboResearch in the NOS Radio 1 News. “They’re having more trouble making ends meet and they’re apparently more concerned about that.”
These differences cannot be explained by the fact that tenants more often have lower incomes than buyers, the researchers say. “We took into account, for example, differences in income, age and family composition, and even then you see that the differences between tenants and homeowners remain,” says Vrieselaar.
Falling interest rates, rising rents
The researchers say it appears that rents, especially in the free sector, are becoming too high, making tenants more financially vulnerable. Tenants spend a larger part of their income on housing costs, the Central Bureau of Statistics concluded earlier. Even if you take into account the costs for maintenance that homeowners have to deal with, and tenants in principle do not.
In addition, rents often rise every year, while falling interest rates mean that the costs for homeowners who can refinance their mortgages fall.
RaboResearch’s research also shows that tenants are more likely to say that their rent has risen in the past twelve months, while homeowners’ monthly expenses have fallen more often. According to Vrieselaar, a possible part of the solution is to reduce the mortgage interest deduction, which will reduce the difference between tenants and homeowners.
Delay
House prices are rising fast. In the second quarter this year, an average of 410,000 euros was paid for an existing home, almost 20 percent more than a year earlier, according to figures from real estate association NVM. These rising prices have an impact on both tenants and buyers, ING also says in a statement research.
People postpone living together or starting a family due to a lack of a suitable home. 19 percent of the first-time buyers surveyed by ING even indicated that they were unable to live independently at all due to the tight housing market.
Outgoing bodies
Rising prices also cause problems for divorcing couples, say mediation organization Scheidingsexpert Nederland and Van Bruggen Adviesgroep in a press release. Due to the rising equity value, it is becoming increasingly difficult for divorcing couples to buy out the other, they see in practice.
Finding a new home after a divorce is also a huge challenge, they say. Some young divorcing couples still have a fall-back option by living with their parents, the organizations write. This often does not apply to older divorcing couples.
These studies and press releases will be published in the run-up to the housing protest this Sunday, which will advocate, among other things, for sufficient affordable houses.
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